This is my reflection. I will write this. Real text TK
Little 500 – April Greiman
I will have this filled out by sunday
Kate’s Little 500 Influence Poster
My project 2 in J465 was all about influence. During this unit, I’ve learned about different design influences throughout history and specific designers who pioneered their own style. For this project to make a Little 500 poster through an influential designer, I chose to use Lester Beall.
About Lester Beall: (1903-1969) Beall was a self-taught graphic designer who began the modernist graphic design movement in the United States. His transformative work for that time period is described as effective visual communication. Beall is most famously known for the work he did for the Rural Electrification Administration, which advertised bringing electricity to rural America. His posters had bright colors and bold typography and were easily recognizable and clearly understood.
I initially chose Lester Beall as my influence because I was instantly drawn to his designs. As a designer myself, I enjoy taking a minimalist approach and I like bold colors. Therefore, Beall was the perfect fit for my influence and I was really excited to complete this project because it was also a topic that is meaningful to me, the Little 500.
Most of Beall’s famous posters are for the REA. If you research, there tend to be two approaches he designed for this specific campaign. One features a cutout photo against a primary colored background and different flat shapes and typography surrounding it. The other is similar but is based on an illustration with arrows instead of a photo. The approach I went with is the first option because I think that photography can add a lot to a design and the fun sayings in the boxes above the photos gave me a unique opportunity. For the photo, I found a picture of bikers and cut them out using Photoshop. I also added a sepia look to them since that is what most of Beall’s work had. Originally, I planned to make the background of my poster red for IU but decided against it because I liked how the cornflower blue looked with orange and I feel like it suited Beall’s work. I stuck with similar fonts to his to embody the full effect of his design. I also made sure that the block of text at the top of the page was skewed and not 180 degrees. An “easter egg” I wanted to include was the small type that says INDIANA at the top right part of the poster. On Beall’s posters, he always put his last name in small letters in the same spot, so I thought it would be effective to do the same with mine, but in relation to what the poster is about. One thing I added that his posters did not feature was the text about the men’s and women’s races. I felt like this was an appropriate placement for this information because it aligned with the shape behind it and wasn’t extremely noticeable at first glance.
Overall, I see Lester Beall’s influence reflected in my work by the colors, typography, shapes, and photos I chose. This project opened my mindset to other design elements that could work for me in future projects that aren’t what I would immediately choose on my own.
Bonnie MacLean Influenced Project
For my Little 500 Influence Project, I have chosen Bonnie MacLean and her work as the influence for my poster. Bonnie MacLean created psychedelic art in the 60’s. MacLean’s most popular works include the vintage, psychedelic concert posters we see today. I thought that this would be a fun way to try something new and outside of my comfort zone.
While MacLean tends to use human faces as the subject of her pieces, I chose to use a helmet to represent Little 500. Her color usage is typically very vibrant and limited in the amount of colors chosen. I opted to also take this route by focusing on three main colors to emphasize the main subject and text.
Most of her work has an element of symmetry within it and some form of distortion as most psychedelic art pieces do. I chose to use distortion effects on my text and a main spiral in the background to bring in the element of classic psychedelic art while also making my text symmetrical on the page.
I think I was able to encapsulate some core elements of psychedelic art but I don’t feel as though it directly represents Bonnie MacLean, rather it is a nod to her and her work.
Owen’s Room Publishing
I Will Add To This!!!
Tell-Tale Publishing
For my logo, I knew I wanted to challenge myself to think outside the box. As an actor, the easiest way for me to do this is through storytelling. Since the logo is for a publishing company, I decided to base my company/logo on “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe. The story revolves around an unreliable narrator as he recounts murdering an old man with striking blue eyes. His guilt and hallucinations of the victim’s heart thumping under the floorboards leads him to confess to murder to two policemen. I’ve always loved creepy old stories, and many of my favorite short stories are by Edgar Allen Poe, including “Masque of the Red Death” and “The Cask of Amontillado”. I want more people to appreciate these stories, even if they are old, which is why Tell-Tale Publishing focuses on republishing vintage, macabre stories for new audiences to enjoy.
I wanted to tell the story of “The Tell-Tale Heart” through the logo. So, the logo is made of a drop of blood that features an upside-down heart and a piercing blue eye. The colors of the brand are red, white, blue, and black. The heart is upside down to represent it being hidden under the narrator’s floorboards, and the eye represents the striking blue eyes of the old man who gets murdered. Eye imagery always makes me slightly unsettled, and I wanted the logo to give that off-putting feeling. I chose a clean and condensed font to evoke a modern feel as the company focuses on republishing classics.
The most challenging part of this project was trying not to do too much. I don’t have much experience with logo design, more with posters and ads. I’ve always wanted to develop my skills in logo design, but I have a hard time being able to tell what looks “good”. There are so many iconic logos that I feel set the standard for logo design, and I get in my head about whether or not mine is “good enough”.
Overall, I felt like this project pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to be a vulnerable designer. I hope to work on logos more in the future because it was a very fun process and got my creativity flowing.
AUSTIN ~ LOGO PROJECT
I have never had experience with designing a logo, so I honestly found this process to be slightly difficult. I found myself being really indecisive and picky about what I wanted to design, so I definitely changed and started over the entire process three or more times. My overarching idea for the project was that I wanted to have it centered around a Christian publishing house. My problem with this, however, was being able to implement a biblical theme that still remained simplistic enough to understand what it was referring to and reveal the story while also not overwhelming viewers with a super detailed design that can quickly become confusing. Putting together a complete brand voice was also very new to me. I found this fun to do, but I initially just felt very overwhelmed by it because it was something that we did not go into too much detail about in class, and it was something that I quickly realized to be pretty detailed and time-consuming. I think that is a very important facet to a design process, especially with a logo, and I wish we went over it more in class and went through more professional, real-life examples, but I am very glad that I now have that experience and exposure to this design detail. Overall, I believe this hands-on experience has greatly improved my understanding of the design process. Looking at future designs, I want to build my confidence with the work that I am creating as well as put myself in unfamiliar territory so I can continue to push myself and learn new techniques and skills.
Crown Ace Publishing
The hardest part for me was bringing out the name of the publishing company that I wanted to use for my logo. I wanted to create something different that I hadn’t seen in any examples or online. I love playing with cards and came up with the idea to put cards and a crown together. I wanted something that symbolized high standards. that reflects what I want this Publishing Company to have and what’s in our brand voice. I wanted to originally do a king and just use the crown for that but it was super hard to not come up with something that I’ve already seen. so instead of going with a king or a queen with an ace that is also at that high standard.
In terms of actually creating the logo, I went through a lot of sketches that were very similar to each other. I definitely wanted to incorporate the crown and the ace somehow so that they were intertwined in some way. I found that the easiest way to do that was to start with my Ace and start with how I wanted my crown to be then combine those together. I ended up drawing each of those separately and then putting them together. The color scheme was very hard for me to figure out but I ended up going with black and red these traditional colors for a deck of cards. I thought having the colors represent a part of what my logo is derived from would be a good choice. The typography was also very hard to figure out because I wanted something that matched the flow of the lines that I have in my design but also looked clean and modern and yet still timeless like a a deck of cards and ultimately books.
Overall I think that I did a good job. There are definitely areas that I can improve on. One of those is spending more time in the sketching phase. Even though I had an idea drawn out it was a lot of going back and forth from Illustrator to sketching. I think my brand guide does a great job explaining what I wanted the logo to look like in all different forms as well as what my company’s message is. I enjoyed working on this project and it definitely helped me work more on each step than rushing to the end.
Canvas & Co. Studios – Logo
In my design process, there were a lot of strategic decisions that I had executed to merge strategy with design.
For starters, I chose the name “Canvas & Co. Studios” because I appreciated the idea of a message aimed towards creativity on a blank canvas. In my thought process, a blank canvas can be extremely daunting for the typical person. Therefore, I desired to create a publishing company that promises to help combat this issue. I chose the “&” symbol because I felt like it added more to the cohesiveness of the name. Additionally, I chose the word “studios” instead of “publishing” because I believed that it gave more of an artistic feel to the company, rather than a company that focuses on writing.
The color scheme for my company is based on neutrals because the colors’ psychology relates to reliability, calmness, and unity. These colors go well with the promise of the brand, as my company promises to create reliable and high-quality work for its clients. I started with the darker rust color and then selected other colors that were close to this hue.
The symbol above the typographic mass was what took the most time for this project. I wanted to create a symbol that could be used as a secondary logo by itself; however, I wanted to make sure that the symbol related to the company’s name in some way. To solve this, I created an abstract shape and meshed it with the letter “C” for “Canvas & Co.” I also added a small shape in the middle that is meant to relate to a plus symbol, as it combines the two letters.
Overall, I feel like I did well on this project and created deliverables that I am proud of. The hardest part of this project was combating the blank canvas, in other words, thinking of what to start with. I believe I could have spent more time on the brand guide’s layout, as I feel like I could’ve been more creative to engage with the clients better. I enjoyed this project as a whole because I desire to improve my brand design skills. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to fully express my thought process on the design.
Alyse Franklin – Ink Logo Design
With this project, I started by deciding my publishing company’s name. I chose “Ink” because I thought that there was a great potential for lots of different and engaging logo designs. After choosing the name, I immediately began sketching. I started thinking along the lines of a quill writing in ink, so my initial sketches involved lots of feathers, but then I landed on the idea of an ink splatter and that dominated the rest of my sketching process, which is visible on pages 7 and 8 of my brand guide to the left. I think that the sketching part, both on paper and in Adobe Illustrator, was the most fun part of this project. I enjoyed being able to physically sketch my ideas out, and also asking my friends and family for feedback on what they thought about different versions of my logo.
The hardest part of this project for me was writing the mission statement for Ink Publishing as a brand. I thought that choosing a brand voice was not too challenging considering we went over it extensively in class, but I thought that writing a mission statement for an entirely fictional company based on just a logo and brand voice was quite difficult. It took me lots of rewriting and revising to land on a mission statement that I was satisfied with. I also found it difficult to design the brand guide devoid of color. Because my logo was black, and other iterations were black and white, I felt that those were the only two colors I could incorporate in the brand guide. However, I think that in the future I would put more color in the design of my guide because even though my logo didn’t have color, that doesn’t mean that the brand can’t have more colors included in its identity.
Overall, I enjoyed this project because I loved the logo designing process, and I think the experience was valuable for any future case where I might be allowed to design a logo for a group/brand, fictional or not. In the future, I think that I could improve my mission-statement-writing skills, as well as possibly incorporate more color into my brand guide.